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Books for learning using a fountain pen with chinese characters?


PotbellyPig

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I found 2 books in Japanese by seaching for 万年筆 ペン字 on amazon.co.jp.  But I think there would be more offerings in Chinese.  Can anyone point me to books that show practice examples of the characters written with a fountain pen?  Either in Chinese or Japanese.  Thanks!

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This search will give you other pointers:

https://www.google.com/search?q=硬筆書法&tbm=isch

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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37 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

This search will give you other pointers:

https://www.google.com/search?q=硬筆書法&tbm=isch

Thanks for the info.

I wish that online book wasn’t for cursive.  Do you know of a book that shows kanji or hanzi written with a fountain pen so that you can try to mmitate it?  Most are written with a brush.

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37 minutes ago, PotbellyPig said:

Do you know of a book that shows kanji or hanzi written with a fountain pen so that you can try to mmitate it?

 

Did you try the Google search I suggest above?

 

Exemplars are what you make of them. I looked on the Web and read a few articles (in Chinese) on the subject of pointed pen Chinese calligraphy, and I think at the heart of it, the first exemplars were artefacts written with fine brushes; practitioners than used pencils, felt tip pens, and fountain pens to try to emulate the ‘expressiveness’ (i.e. line variation) while adhering to the general form, structure and placement of the strokes, using the writing instruments at hand.

 

You can try this for starters:

https://kknews.cc/culture/8y23ol.html

which is an article briefly surveying the work of ten famous pointed pen calligraphers (in answer to the rhetorical question of, “Who is the best?”)

 

p.s. 黃柱河, the author of the original《硬筆行法》(the subject of the linked discussion thread) also wrote another book titled《硬筆楷法》for pointed pen kaishu (i.e. regular script) calligraphy. You can search for that, and see if you can get a copy. Don't expect to see a legitimately free (as in released into the public domain with a Creative Commons licence to use, or some such), downloadable copy or translation of it online, though.

 

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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20 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

Did you try the Google search I suggest above?

 

Exemplars are what you make of them. I looked on the Web and read a few articles (in Chinese) on the subject of pointed pen Chinese calligraphy, and I think at the heart of it, the first exemplars were artefacts written with fine brushes; practitioners than used pencils, felt tip pens, and fountain pens to try to emulate the ‘expressiveness’ (i.e. line variation) while adhering to the general form, structure and placement of the strokes, using the writing instruments at hand.

 

You can try this for starters:

https://kknews.cc/culture/8y23ol.html

which is an article briefly surveying the work of ten famous pointed pen calligraphers (in answer to the rhetorical question of, “Who is the best?”)

 

p.s. 黃柱河, the author of the original《硬筆行法》(the subject of the linked discussion thread) also wrote another book titled《硬筆楷法》for pointed pen kaishu (i.e. regular script) calligraphy. You can search for that, and see if you can get a copy. Don't expect to see a legitimately free (as in released into the public domain with a Creative Commons licence to use, or some such), downloadable copy or translation of it online, though.

 

I’m not sure how to order a copy of 硬筆法.  Is there any wsy to easily get it in the USA?  And I can read Japanese, not Chinese.  Do you think it can still help me? 

I’m trying to find something equivalent in Japanese but the reviews for the two short penji books for fountain pens are less than stellar.  I don’t know if you can read Japanese as well as Chinese but do you know of anything similar to 硬筆法 in Japanese?  Thanks!

 

 

 

 

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23 minutes ago, PotbellyPig said:

I’m not sure how to order a copy of 硬筆法.  Is there any wsy to easily get it in the USA?

 

I believe the title is long out of print anyway.

 

23 minutes ago, PotbellyPig said:

I don’t know if you can read Japanese as well as Chinese but do you know of anything similar to 硬筆法 in Japanese?  Thanks!

 

I can neither read Japanese nor comprehend spoken Japanese, sorry. In fact, before I got into the fountain pen hobby a few years ago, I barely used any Chinese for three decades, and I struggle to understand articles and books written in Chinese (more so in simplified form) these days. I discover a lot of information through the use of Web search for Chinese and Japanese search terms (which I can recognise and write or otherwise reproduce), and get by with the help of Google Translate.

 

I'm sure you can do in Japanese what I can do in Chinese, in terms of finding stuff. :)

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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@ PotbellyPig -- is there a college library or someplace that teaches Chinese as a foreign language near you?  You might be able to get some help from a reference librarian or someone who can check/suggest titles for what you want (and even a small town library might be able to order something through interlibrary loan for you from a larger library).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

"It's very nice, but frankly, when I signed that list for a P-51, what I had in mind was a fountain pen."

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  • 3 months later...
On 10/12/2021 at 11:18 AM, PotbellyPig said:

I’m not sure how to order a copy of 硬筆法.  Is there any wsy to easily get it in the USA?  And I can read Japanese, not Chinese.  Do you think it can still help me? 

 

Not that title specifically, but I found these ones on AliExpress that can be ordered from overseas:

 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001580496519.html

H33f237ce90af47d3a5f6d9dce7ac6388S.jpg

 

On 10/11/2021 at 1:53 PM, PotbellyPig said:

Can anyone point me to books that show practice examples of the characters written with a fountain pen?

 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000938456912.html

H4569a8d9c4cd475ab38026ef41058a26K.jpg

 

The first one is instructional (if you can figure out what the text ‘says’), whereas the second one is, for the most part (that I could see, from the item listing), a very long list of hanzi shown written in five or six different scripts by someone using a stiff pointed pen. Personally I'm not impressed by what I saw in the latter; but I ordered a copy of the former, even though it is written in simplified Chinese, which isn't what I use or can easily read.

 

On 10/11/2021 at 2:35 PM, PotbellyPig said:

Do you know of a book that shows kanji or hanzi written with a fountain pen so that you can try to mmitate it?

 

Personally, I think you should try this style:

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/痩金体

 

Here's a ‘complete’ book of exemplars, written by the man (Emperor Huizong of Song, who developed this, his own personal style of kaishu) himself:

 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001585930702.html

The-Complete-Works-of-Song-Huizong-s-Slender-Gold-Regular-Script-Calligraphy-Pratice-Copybook-for-Beginners.jpg_Q90.jpg

 

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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Thanks!  It looks useful.  Too bad the Japanese version of this type of book are few and far between.  It seems the Chinese take fountain pens more seriously.

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2 hours ago, PotbellyPig said:

Too bad the Japanese version of this type of book are few and far between.

 

Well, I certainly cannot comment on the availability of volumes of Japanese calligraphy exemplars and facsimiles of stelae, but,

 

On 10/11/2021 at 1:53 PM, PotbellyPig said:

I found 2 books in Japanese by seaching for 万年筆 ペン字 on amazon.co.jp.  …‹snip›… Can anyone point me to books that show practice examples of the characters written with a fountain pen?

 

surely this would give you a good enough start:

https://www.amazon.co.jp/s?k=万年筆+書道&rh=n%3A465392 ?

 

I can't read Japanese, so I'm not going to bother looking at them individually more closely. However, even after rejecting one page's worth of matches out of the six returned, I trust there will be something suitable, even if they may not be written specifically to address the use of fountain pens with their particular performance characteristics and idiosyncrasies, but describe only how to write more pleasingly with a pen that has a rigid round point (such as a ballpoint pen, or a fountain pen with a regular, stiff, round-tipped nib). Not to mention that some listings may lead you to other listings among Amazon's recommendations and what “other customers also bought”.

 

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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